The Loss
by Feline Feral
Summary: SG1 find themselves trapped and must return to the Stargate quickly or risk losing one of their own.


Disclaimer: I do not own the Stargate SG-1 characters. This is for entertainment purposes only, mostly mine. No profit is being made. Please don't sue. All you'll get anyway is some lint and a whole whack of unfinished stories.

Note: Thanks go out to Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter and Jack O'Neill for betaing this for me. I wrote this to fill of in a journal for my Writer's Craft course. I was in a really weird mood, please bear with me. Any comments would be most welcome. I live for reviews. This does come with a warning but to say it here would ruin it. If you want to see the warning before you read srool to the bottom.

The Loss 

Daniel Jackson woke with a terrible headache. He couldn't remember where he was or how he got there. Daniel let out a groan as he forced his eyes open. It was dark, very dark almost pitch black around him. Trying to focus, Daniel could barley make out the forms of his friends.

"Guys? Sam, Jack, Teal'c are you okay?" Daniel winced as the sound reverberated through the room.

"I am fine, Daniel Jackson. Are you well?"

Daniel thought about it for a moment. "Yes. I am alive anyway."

"That's good to know, Daniel. What happened?" Sam Carter asked as she joined the quiet conversation.

Teal'c answered for Daniel. "I am unsure, Major Carter. I believe it was an attack."

This is where Jack decided to join the conversation. "Yeah, an attack of Daniel's curiosity. For Pete's sake! I told you not to touch anything, Daniel."

Daniel didn't reply; a short while later whatever he could see in the room—which wasn't much, mind you—had started spinning. His vision faded in and out of clarity and bile rose up his throat. Daniel let a small groan escape from between his lips as pain flashed through his body. It was funny the pain hadn't been there before.

Worried, because Daniel hadn't snapped back with a retort like usual, Jack began looking for a flashlight or something. Anything that wasn't broken. He needed to illuminate the room, cave, wherever they were.

"Daniel?" Sam called loudly, hoping to get a response. The only response she got was another moan.

Suddenly the area filled with light. Jack had found a kerosene lantern that hadn't been damaged. Not caring as to why they had a kerosene lantern in the first place, Jack took in the area. It was a dank pit. Jack knew now that they had fallen into a trap.

When Jack swore, Sam's attention was brought out of her daze. She blinked away the spots the sudden light had created and focused on the problem. Well, she would when she knew what that was anyway.

Jack O'Neill, who was not a doctor, knew that what he saw was not good. Daniel was unconscious and, in the newly given light, Jack could see a spider's web of blood on his face. Frankly it was amazing Daniel had been conscious at all. There was deep purple bruising across his left cheek. What worried Jack the most was the red stain that covered Daniel's shirt.

"Carter," Jack called over to her. Sam looked up from her conversation with Teal'c. "Give me a hand here."

Sam and Jack carefully lifted Daniel's shirt, thankful he wasn't wear his TAC vest. "Shit!" Jack cursed as he took in the sight before him. This was definitely not good. A piece of whatever type of metal this planet had, was sticking out of Daniel's abdomen. Jack carefully inspected around Daniel, trying to find where the metal began and Daniel ended. He found that Daniel had landed on the fragment and the piece had barely been long enough to reveal what it did.

"Sir?" Sam brought Jack out of his inspection and back to the matter at hand. "We have to get him out of here and back to Janet. If we don't…" The rest of Sam's sentence hung thickly in the air around them.

"I know, Carter. Teal'c, can you see any way out of here?"

"Indeed I do, O'Neill. But with Daniel Jackson in his current state he would not survive."

"We'll figure something else out then," Sam said quietly. "Sir he's bleeding badly."

Jack didn't answer. He swore as he fiddled with his radio hoping to get a message out to SG-2. All he got was static, but the radio seemed fine.

Teal'c, who had been as per usual mostly silent through the entire thing, studied the pits walls. "I will endeavor to climb these walls. I will collect help."

Neither Sam nor Jack argued. They might not like the situation, but with Daniel unable to be moved to get out of the pit, it was the best way. Jack spoke quietly, he knew what he was about to ask Teal'c to do would probably cause Daniel more pain then he was already in. "That's as good as a plan as we got, Teal'c, but first I need you to do something. We have to get this thing out of Daniel. I need you to lift him straight up."

Sam gasped and her head snapped up from the radio she was trying to get a signal from. "Sir, you can't do that. We don't know the extent of the damage. It could kill him. He'd bleed to death."

"He's already bleeding to death, Carter!" Jack snapped. "We can't even put pressure on the wound with the metal sticking out of it." Quietly more to himself than anyone Jack said. "It doesn't matter…."

Sam didn't argue as Teal'c gently, but swiftly, lifted Daniel straight up in the air. Daniel, even unconscious let out a weak scream as the metal left his body. Grim determination to keep Daniel alive sat across the remaining SG-1 member's faces. Teal'c laid Daniel down on the emergency blanket Sam had found in her pack and then began his climb.

As soon as Daniel was flat, Sam ripped away his shirt, tossing it to the side. The bleeding was worse now; she still didn't see the point of doing what Jack had ordered. It had only caused Daniel more pain and took more of his remaining time away. Using whatever clean material they had found, Sam and Jack applied as much pressure as they could to both sides of the wound.

Teal'c had made it out of the pit after a few failed attempts. As he began to trek toward the Stargate, his radio sparked to life. "SG-1 this is SG-2. Do you copy?"

"Indeed. This is Teal'c. We required medical assistance immediately. We are 5 clicks northeast from the Stargate." The pit must have blocked out the transmissions.

"O'Neill!" Teal'c called into the pit.

"Yeah?" Jack shouted back.

"I have received a radio transmission from SG-2. They are on their way." Teal'c answered him.

"ETA?" Jack yelled.

"15 minutes!" Teal'c said again, peering over the edge of the hole.

Sam, who had been listening hopefully, turned to Jack. "Sir, I really don't think Daniel will last that long."

Jack looked down to Daniel. They had both been applying pressure to the severe wounds, but neither had the courage to look at him. Daniel was blanketed in a thin film of sweat and even more blood than before. His breathing was ragged and his skin was extremely pale; a large contrast to the bright red blood that soaked him and the ground around him.

Jack's eyes were hard when he looked at Sam again. "He'll make it."

By the time SG-2 arrived Daniel was barely holding on. His life's blood having oozed out of the two holes left by the alien metal that had thought itself fit to smash through him. Jack felt Daniel's pulse. It was thready and jumping all over the place.

"Jack!" Feretti called down. "How is he?"

"Not good. Get us out of here!" Jack told him.

That task proved to be difficult, but after a couple of minutes Feretti came up with an idea. They created a stretcher and attached rope to it. Daniel was put in it and slowly lifted out of the pit. Unfortunately, the stretcher didn't make it much farther than that. Teal'c ended up carrying Daniel as the group triple timed it to the Gate.

Just as Sam dialed the gate, Feretti yelled. "Jack, get over here!"

Sam and Jack stopped what they were doing and ran over to where Teal'c and Feretti were. The Gate whooshed to life behind them but no one noticed. They were too busy trying to get Daniel to stay with them.

Unfortunately, Daniel was beyond the point of no return. There simply wasn't enough blood left in his body for his heart to circulate. Daniel Jackson took one shallow breath and never let go. Solemnly, Teal'c lifted Daniel's body and the group went through the Gate. Whether dead or alive, SG-1 would not leave a man behind.

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Warning: Character Death. I apologize for the one-letter lines but it is the only way it would let me put the warning far enough away from the story.


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